Someone Else
by otpbrainless
Summary: Katniss realizes the only way to save Peeta from saving her is to find someone else
1. The Beginning

_"You know what you need to do." _

_ "If I honestly knew what I needed to do, I wouldn't be bothering you. We both know that." _

_ "You need to make him fall out of love with you, Katniss." _

_ "And how on earth am I supposed to do that?"_

_ "So modest,"_

_ "Haymitch, please."_

_ "Find someone else." _

Katniss Everdeen placed her hands in her lap and uneasily began to swing her legs back and forth. Just the thought of the familiar training facility was enough to throw her body into an unwelcome panic. A year ago, she had been certain she would never see that God forsaken center again. Yet here she was, idly pumping her body in sync to the bumps of the train car heading towards the facility. She jumped slightly, reminded of her companion by the clear of a throat.

"You look…"

Katniss smiled wryly. "Terrible?"

"Beautiful."

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. This was the kind of pureed sentimental bullshit Katniss hated. Even coming from Peeta, those sorts of comments had a way of soiling her mood.

"Ha-_ha_"

"I'm serious Katniss. You do." Peeta looked down at his hands, most likely cursing himself for commenting on the girl's appearance at all. "Is something... bothering you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. You just seem a little…lost in thought, I guess."

"Well, this whole 'fighting to the death for, not the first, but the _second _time' deal has me a little consumed at the moment."

"Well, it shouldn't."

Although she knew Peeta was just trying to cheer her up, Katniss could feel her temper short-circuiting.

"And why shouldn't it, Peeta?" she snapped.

"You're a natural born survivor. You'll make it out of this game, just like the last."

She didn't deserve him, romantically or platonically. As irritating as she sometimes found him, Peeta was one of the sweetest people she'd ever known. She had no idea why someone of his moral stature would bother with her.

"Oh God, I hope not." Katniss said, trying unsuccessfully to mentally shut down his reassurances. Peeta glanced up at her, a blend of hurt and confusion.

"Katniss-"

"Oh Peeta, for Christ's sake! Don't you get it? If I get out…you-you…"

"Don't?" he lifted his focal point to meet her gaze, smiling sadly.

"I'm not going to let that happen. Say what you'd like, but I won't."

And with that she stood up to leave, taking with her the last word.

She'd been seeking Haymitch for approximately five seconds before she found him, lips sealed to a bottle in the dining compartment. The area around him was littered with an assortment of colorfully labeled bottles, warning women with child not to consume.

"You're going to end up drinking yourself to death Haymitch. I swear to God."

He smirked, raising the bottle to toast with air. "That's the plan, sweetheart."

She chuckled, then averted her gaze to the floor.

"Something wrong?"

"Peeta says he wants to protect me."

"And…?"

"I can't let that happen. Peeta needs to be the one to come back. Not me."

Katniss was met with a look of disinterested confusion. She sighed, clearly exasperated.

"Fuck Haymitch… what do I do?" she squeaked.

"You know what you need to do."

"If I honestly knew what I needed to do, I wouldn't be bothering you. We both know that." She snapped.

Haymitch sighed, and replied with a tone which implied such simplicity one would assume his previous statement had been a line from _Dick and Jane._ "You need to make him fall out of love with you, Katniss."

"And how on earth am I supposed to do that?"

"So modest,"

She pressed her fingers into her temple. "Haymitch, please."

"Find someone else."

"Fuck you." Katniss spun on her heel, deciding to leave before she lost her temper.

"Someone else to _love_." He hissed. Katniss froze in her tracks.

"But… wouldn't that… _hurt _him?"

"He'd survive. And that's what you're trying to do: help him survive." She frowned, still unsure.

"But why would that help him survive?"

Haymitch sighed. "Katniss, the boy's soft. He has the heart of a teenage girl. Do you honestly think he'd be able to let go of a spiteful broken heart? Even in the arena?"

The truth in his words hurt Katniss more than she would ever admit. "That's not true. Peeta's not like that. He-"

"What? Loves you? The heart is a malleable thing Katniss. Remember that."

She swallowed, letting his words enter her bloodstream. If this was the way to save Peeta, she'd go through with it. No matter how much it hurt, she'd do it.

She grimaced. "So how do I go about finding someone else?"


	2. The Tell

**A/N**- Okay so in retrospect, this chapter is kind of irrelevant, but I've been so fascinated by Johanna's Games hence...this chapter oops.

* * *

"Who's next?"

"No one in particular," Peeta responded. "You pick."

"Johanna Mason." Katniss declared, picking out the disk entitled _The 71__st__ Hunger Games. _

"Her tactics will need to be different this time around-"

"Maybe the _way _she deceives will be different this time, but everyone has a tell. Let's find hers."

Peeta nodded, holding the disk between his thumb and index finger. He stood up and placed it in the player.

Katniss had forgotten how recent these games were; the faces of the tributes shown during the Reaping all sparked a flare of familiarity in her. The order in which the districts' Reapings appeared was numerical. When the footage of Seven was shown, Katniss felt an unwelcome pang of pity for the Mason girl. From the moment her name was called, Johanna was hysterical. Tears and snot were trailing down her face, lightly gathering just above her upper lip. She just stood, frozen to her spot. No one hugged her, consoled her. No one mourned. When her subconscious realized no one was coming, she hesitantly began to make her way up to the stage. When she reached her destination, she straightened up and tried, to no avail, to soften her fear.

"She's good." Katniss murmured.

"If I didn't know how these Games were going to go, I'd say she really was afraid."

The vast majority of the interviews had been cut short, probably due to the fact that no one in the Capitol cared what a dead tribute had to say. Johanna's interview, however, was unedited. Her lilac dress was without blemish or wrinkle, softly brushing the floor as she walked. She was far too young for much jewelry, so her stylist had adorned her hair with pale lavender orchids. The way in which she walked veered towards sickly, her physically youthful feet scuffing against the ground in doddering steps of a girl at least thrice her age. Her slight shoulders dragged in her gown as she moved carefully toward Caesar, momentarily pausing for balance before continuing.

Though skinny to begin with, Katniss noted that the girl had lost a significant amount of weight.

"So," Caesar Flickerman began once Johanna had settled herself. "I hear you have a birthday coming up."

She smiled meekly, clearly exhausted. Her half-open eyes seemed about ready to tumble to the floor if it weren't for the dark rings of fatigue and worry holding them up.

"Yes, I do."

"It's a shame. The arena is no place to celebrate a birthday. Especially your sixteenth birthday."

Johanna nodded, more so from reflex than a true agreement.

"Did you have anything special planned? A party maybe?"

"No I di-didn't." her voice cracked, most likely from grief.

_Well, _Katniss thought,_ faux grief. _

"Well, in case I don't see you again," he presented her with a knowing smile, assuming he would not get to see her again. "Happy Birthday Johanna." The audience cheered as Johanna plastered a smile and stood up, shaking Caesar's hand as she went.

For the majority of training, Johanna isolated herself to a corner, curling her knees up to her chin. To anyone watching the Games in the moment, it would seem that the little girl had no skills to strengthen; that her weakness was her utter lack of strengths. But Katniss knew better. Johanna was surveying the pool of tributes, calculating their every move, their attack tactics, how she would use that information against them. Though her win is typically attributed to her skill with an axe, the truth was, Johanna won the battle of wits, and came out on top as a result. The girl, though seemingly violent, had her strengths in intelligence. Reckless, irrationally violent; it was all a ploy. Everything she did was premeditated, deliberate.

She received a two for her training score, opting to throw a knife at the targeted dummy. She missed completely.

After a few snippets of the tributes training, it was time for the contenders to be brought to their launching tubes.

As the tributes were lifted into the arena, the camera scanned the playing grounds. Snow pellets blew across the flatly frozen landscape, adding to the already-present streaks and whirls showcasing patterns from the gusting wind. The usual supply-packs and weapons littering the Cornucopia appeared to be nearly, if not completely, iced to the ground. Snow-capped mountain ranges encompassed the tributes. Katniss assumed they were placed in this way to further fortify the idea that there truly was no way out.

None of the children were dressed for this weather; the majority of them clad in lame wind breakers at best. If the arena was anywhere near as cold as it looked, half of the tributes would be dead by morning.

The camera panned over to Johanna, who was shivering in a green parka. Her tired eyes looked as though they were about to spill over with tears. Katniss could only assume the tears were only sustained for fear of them freezing to her cheek.

There was one last cinematic round-about of the tributes before the dreaded "Let the Seventy-first Hunger Games begin!"

Within seconds the pure snow was soaked in blood. It was astonishing what a difference seeing death painted on a white canvas could make.

By the time Johanna reached the Cornucopia, there had already been six cannon blasts. No one, including the cameras, paid her any mind as she grabbed a nearby pack and made a run toward the forested mountains. After all, the first day's massacre was much more exciting than a fifteen-year-old girl heading for a dead-end.

Eight tributes were left dead in the now-empty Cornucopia. Just after the hovercrafts had collected the bodies, a slight profile appeared in the frame, dashing to where a corpse had just been retrieved. Once there, Johanna dug into the bloodied snow, pulling up an axe. Within seconds, she was gone again.

This time, however, the cameras followed her. She was panting, probably cursing herself for not partaking in training of _any _sort. Holding her pack and windbreaker close to her skin, she began her trek up the mountains.

Watching the young girl suffer must not have been interesting enough, because shortly after the focus had returned to the Career Pack.

Eleven faces were projected into the sky that first night. Eleven tributes. Eleven children.

Johanna was shown again, bottom lip quivering as she sat by a fire a viewer could only assume she made. The supply-pack she had picked up must have contained the Winter-appropriated coat she was wearing now. Her skin was raw and bleeding, the vicious wind slicing at her exposed flesh. She brought a handful of snow to her lips and lapped a bit into her mouth. This action was continued until she, sensing something awry, suddenly threw it onto the ground and reached her finger down her throat to force herself to retch.

The girl had killer instincts, Katniss would give her that. The snow was laced with arsenic; already three tributes had died from ingesting it.

She immediately sprung into a fit of hyperventilating sobs, wrapping her arms around her knees as she fell into herself. Choking on the crisp air in the arena, Johanna didn't get up; just continued her cries until they became dehydrated moans.

_Poor kid. _

After the second day, there were nine tributes left. The frost was killing them off like wildfire.

_Hah, if only._

The third day brought a flurry of snowflakes with a cold, biting wind. The sun, though providing no warmth, was taken away. Now the only source of light was fire.

The Career Pack lost three to the blizzard, leaving only six tributes.

Johanna was seen again on the fourth day, desperately clutching the water bottle she had received via parachute. Her lips were flaking off like fish scales, leaving even her speech vulnerable. The camera stuck to Johanna for a longer period of time than before, following her as she skinned a rabbit with expert precision and cooked it over the open flames.

With the rabbit steaming and her bonfire put out with snow, Johanna reached into her supply-pack and pulled out a pack of matches, a handful of pine needles, and sixteen frost-coated twigs. She placed the needles and bark onto the rabbit's pelt, arranging the twigs into a teepee to cover them. She then lit the teepee to create a small flame, watching as the pine-scented smoke lifted above her head to be lost at the top of the arena. Hands over her face, she wept softly, her rabbit untouched.

_What was she doing? _And then it hits her. Johanna Mason was celebrating her birthday.

By the seventh day, there are three tributes left: Theta Ballantine from District Three, Geranium Rathbone from District Two, and Johanna Mason from District Seven.

High morning cloud streaked the sky, a lofty white mirror of the tundra below. Johanna tightened her grip on her last match, staring down at its damply frosted tip. All around her on the cold ground lay the corpses of its fellows, twisted into useless black ash. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she bent over the pile of dried twigs. It had been a difficult past couple of days for the remaining tributes: temperatures reaching such unbearable lows, venomous polar bears, dying game. Johanna hadn't eaten in days, hesitant to veer away from her mountain camp.

She closed her eyes and used her breath to warm her hands. But upon hearing the brittle crunching of frost beneath new feet, she shot straight up with her hand on her axe.

She stood up, turning her body around to be met face-to-face with Theta Ballantine. Muscular and scowling, she held an icepick like a dagger and smirked—a lion, scenting weaker prey and biding its time. Johanna gripped her axe tightly to keep it from shaking and swallowed. Hard.

With a moment's hesitation, the girl stabbed at Johanna. She dodged, bringing her axe behind her back and threw it with all the force left in her frailly fading body.

Theta gasped, the axe burrowing itself in the space between her eyes. Immediately after, she heard a canon go off. Johanna sucked in, closing her eyes as she retrieved her axe.

She must have felt the impending end in her gut, packing up her camp to retreat toward the Cornucopia.

Watching with a viewer's perspective, it was almost impossible to believe Johanna's luck. When she arrived at the Cornucopia, she wasn't alone. With his hands pressed to his cheeks, Geranium was settled in the dead center of the expanse. He looked straight at her, shooting her a warm smile.

"Johanna Mason, right?"

Johanna nodded, walking to where he was positioned, grasping her axe so tightly her cracked knuckles were going white with loss of circulation.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He mumbled, not meeting her eyes.

"We're the only two left. You're going to have to hurt me at some point."

"Why does that need to be right now?" The girl loosened. "Sit down with me. I'm so tired."

She did as he asked, sitting herself down into a crossed-legged position. "Happy Hunger Games."

Geranium laughed, throwing his head back as he did so. "_Fuck_ this sucks," he sighed as his laughter died down.

"Oh, come on. _Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise_. Oh wait. Nope. No it won't." This time when he laughed, she joined in.

"One night." He nodded toward her. "One night of being friends, and then tomorrow we'll do what we need to do. I just… want another night of humanity, before I die or… one night. Just one night. _Please._"

"Okay" she agreed, cautiously leaning into him to share body heat. "One night sounds nice."

Katniss could see Johanna losing willpower, slowly letting her eyes droop. She couldn't remember this happening when she saw it on television.

"Do you remember this?" Katniss asked Peeta. Peeta shook his head.

"Can't say I do."

"Did they edit this out?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

They turned their attention back to the Games at hand.

"I killed someone." Johanna murmured.

The boy straightened up to meet her gaze. "I did too. Several."

She closed her eyes tightly, her hand still clamped around her axe handle. "I just want to go home." She whispered; her voice barely audible.

"It's okay." His reply was soft, meant to console the inconsolable.

Before Johanna could respond, her axe was flying through the air, landing in Geranium's curly head of hair. A canon went off.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventy-first Hunger Games, Johanna Mason!"

Johanna gave no sign that she had even heard Claudius Templesmith, simply falling on top of her fresh kill, apologizing profusely to the dead. She began to dry heave with the sobs racking her slight frame.

Katniss grabs the remote and stops the disk, feeling suddenly ill.

"Why did she cry? Why did she cry after murdering someone who trusted her like she _cared_?" Katniss demanded to no one in particular.

Peeta shrugs. "So what's her 'tell'?"

She stared blankly up at him as if he hadn't spoken at all. "She doesn't have one."

"A tell?"

"A soul."


End file.
